In my recent PBSNewsHour article, I discuss Ayn Rand's influence in industry and government. I wrote the article because I found myself wondering why Rand’s popularity among the young continues to grow. Thirty years after her death, her book sales still number in the hundreds of thousands annually. Among her devotees are highly influential celebrities, such as Brad Pitt and Eva Mendes, and politicos, such as current Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

The core of Rand’s philosophy — which also constitutes the overarching theme of her novels — is that unfettered self-interest is good and altruism is destructive. This, she believed, is the ultimate expression of human nature, the guiding principle by which one ought to live one’s life. The fly in the ointment of Rand’s philosophical “objectivism” is the plain fact that humans have a tendency to cooperate and to look out for each other, as noted by many anthropologists who study hunter-gatherers.

Students in my classes who are enamored of Rand usually say the same thing when asked what it is about Rand's objectivism that so strongly appeals to them: "She teaches us that we can rely on no one but ourselves." This misguided belief in solitary self-reliance is extremely comforting because it promises an end to uncertainty: You don't have to worry about being abandoned, betrayed, or let down if you simply never cooperate or depend on anyone else. This is a message that particularly resonates with many people since the 2008 economic meltdown when many lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings.

However alluring, however, the promise of solitary self-reliance is nothing but a sham. Like it or not, we often need to cooperate with others to achieve our goals, and we often need to depend on others simply to get through the day.

More disturbing is ample evidence that implementing Rand's philosophy in industry and government typically leads to resounding failures. There is a reason why even toddlers show a preference for those who help rather than hinder others, and why adults as well as children show such a strong propensity to cooperate rather than defect in economic games. When people behave this way, they are not behaving foolishly. They are giving researchers a glimpse of the prosocial tendencies that made it possible for our species to survive and thrive in the ancestral past as well as today.

In response to many of the Rand supporters who have posted here, I would like to point out a few more things that are wrong with "objectivism".

In Rand's epistemology, the source of all knowledge was sense perception. She rejected all claims of non-perceptual or a priori knowledge. As such, she was in agreement with early theories of cognitive development which assumed infants were little more than sensory-motor systems, and that complex concepts were constructed from these simple building blocks through experience with the environment (e.g., Piaget, 1952). http://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary-blog/4107-rationalism-and-...

But the last three decades of research on infant cognition shown this assumption to be entirely false. Some types of domain-specific knowledge appear to emerge quite early in infancy, before infants have had sufficient time to induce this knowledge through experience. For example, infants are cognitively predisposed to interpret the world in terms of agents and objects whose behaviors are constrained by different sets of principles. http://www.livescience.com/14344-babies-reasoning-complex.html

Rand believed that that the initiation of force was evil and irrational; In Atlas Shrugged, she claimed that "Force and mind are opposites." Yet her descriptions of satisfactory sexual encounters in her novels are graphic depictions of men forcing themselves on women with the aim of deriving satisfaction through the infliction of pain and humiliation. Her followers don't seem to see the contradiction between her strident belief in the sacredness of individual freedom and condemnation of force on the one hand, and her desire for sexual domination and humiliation on the other. This, from The Fountainhead:

“She tried to tear herself away from him. The effort broke against his arms that had not felt it. Her fists beat against his shoulders, against his face. He moved one had, took her two wrists, pinned them behind her, under his arm, wrenching her shoulder blades. She twisted her head back. She felt his lips on her breast…She fought like an animal… He did it as an act of scorn. Not as love, but as defilement."

Rand was also a member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals which blacklisted actors and screen writers (such as Dalton Trumbo) who were members of the Communist party, along with actors, screen writers, movies who were deemed to be sympathetic to communism. http://www.nndb.com/org/441/000355373/

To those who take issue with my presentation of Rand's condemnation of altruism, I encourage them to click on the links in the article to read Rand's own words from original sources. She did indeed embrace rational self-interest as the pinnacle of human fulfillment, and did in fact believe altruism (or any kind of self-sacrifice for others) to be biologically impossible and therefore simply the result of social indoctrination. Here are a few choice quotes:

"As to altruism -- it has never been alive. It is the poison of death in the blood of Western civilization, and men survived it only to the extent to which they neither believed nor practiced it… Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice -- which means: self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction --- which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as the standard of the good." -- Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World by Ayn Rand (A lecture delivered at Yale University on February 17, 1960, at Brooklyn College on April 4, 1960, and at Columbia University on May 5, 1960. http://freedomkeys.com/faithandforce.htm

“Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights...One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal.” The Virtue of Selfishness

Then there is the issue that she disapproved of Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs aimed at providing a safety net for the old, the poor, and the sick, yet she availed herself of Social Security and Medicare iin her penurious old age. Her justification for allowing her fellow countrymen to provision her was that it was simply payback for the money that had been "stolen" from her by the government through social security taxes. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/8/16/1121029/-If-Ayn-Needed-Medicare-...

Dr. Cummins is a research psychologist, a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and the author of Good Thinking: Seven Powerful Ideas That Influence the Way We Think.

It starred Peter Fonda as her cockhold husband.
She had an arraingement with one of her students
to engage in sex. The student's wife went along with it.
She was an absolute tyrant. Finally, the man got so
tired of her abuse, he broke free of her. She
couldn't believe it.

the overarching problem with Rand is that it simply doesn't work in the real world.
If humans were not more likely to cooperate then we would not have civilization. We might not even have cave paintings. We would have nearly nothing. We would be animals only.
Self-interest, as a philosophy, is a toddler's paradise.

What makes you think that Ayn Rand was opposed to cooperation? She was all in favor of it. What she was opposed to was collectivism in which "cooperation" is forced and not to one's advantage.

What advice would you give to an escaped slave? That he would have been better off if he had continued "cooperating" back on the plantation? You are conflating several kinds of "cooperation", some of which Rand thought was fine, and others that she rejected. That's all.

I really dislike Rand, but she was an ardent atheist (even a broken clock is right twice a day).
How can some one like Ted Cruz be a follower of her work?
I don't care how much you defend the values of the free market, if you believe in god Ayn Rand would have not thought you worth it of her work.
She made some good points. But a Randian world would be run by emotionally color blinded psychopaths.

How can Ted Cruz be a fan of her work? Perhaps the reason is that there is more to her writing than you claim (atheism and psychopathy). Perhaps if you had read what she wrote you would know that. Of course, she would not have approved of Cruz's religious outlook, but there's a not more to Rand than a lack of belief in the supernatural. Truth is that it hardly ever comes up since she considered it to be a rather unimportant philosophical question.

Comments and discussion are welcome only if they are respectful and content-appropriate. Comments that include personal attacks, insults, name-calling, aspersions on the character or motivation of the blogger, proselytizing, or are otherwise of poor quality will be deleted.

This is a quality blog, and the posts are well-researched, fact checked, and respectfully submitted to the PT readership. Reciprocation of same is expected.

It's interesting how Ayn Rand devotees become so incensed with Rand's very words are quoted--not misquoted, but accurately quoted--and they don't like what she said. They then accuse the quoter of making up or misinterpreting Rand.

Yes, she did believe unfettered self-interest was the height of self-expression and self-development. Yes she was indeed scornful of altruism, believing it to be a biological impossibility.

Click on the links in the article to go to the ORIGINAL sources.

Re The Fountainhead, here is the scene. There have been many attempt in the 50 Shades era to re-interpret this as not a rape but just rough sex. But as the quote itself shows, this was an act of domination and humiliation which left bruises on Dominique. Call what you will, but it's hard to call it love:

“She tried to tear herself away from him. The effort broke against his arms that had not felt it. Her fists beat against his shoulders, against his face. He moved one had, took her two wrists, pinned them behind her, under his arm, wrenching her shoulder blades. She twisted her head back. She felt his lips on her breast…She fought like an animal… He did it as an act of scorn. Not as love, but as defilement."

Unfettered means "release from restraint or inhibition."
This is not a word she would have ever used to describe what she advocates because it conflates rational self-interest with self-defeating whim-worship. Pursuit of rational self-interest can and does include cooperative behavior. What it does not include is self-sacrificial behavior.

Quote: "The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.

The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value." The Virtue of Selfishness, 31 - Ayn Rand

The issue is not kindness, or benevolence, but the question for Rational Egoism, "Do I have the right to live for my own happiness, and what facts of reality does that require?"

Or Altruism, "Do I exist for the sake of other men? Should I sacrifice my values, my life, my happiness for the happiness of others?"

Rand's philosophy is not Hedonism...

"Just as man cannot survive by any random means, but must discover and practice the principles which his survival requires, so man’s self-interest cannot be determined by blind desires or random whims, but must be discovered and achieved by the guidance of rational principles. This is why the Objectivist ethics is a morality of rational self-interest—or of rational selfishness." “Introduction,”, The Virtue of Selfishness, x - Ayn Rand

As for the sex scene...

Reading the part IN CONTEXT, Dominique did everything she could to lure Roark into her bedroom. Explain the scene where she horse whips Roark when he sends the little Italian guy to "fix her fireplace". Taking the scene by itself is context dropping.

If people read a little more closely, they might begin to wonder why Dominique didn't scream or call for help (her servants were within earshot), why she didn't try to run away, etc. And a great many other "why's" emerge if one reads the whole series of scenes going back to the beginning of Chapter 1. Ayn Rand does a masterful job of showing the reader what Dominque was feeling about Roark and about life in general throughout Chapters 1 and 2 (and the rest of the book, as well).

Also, Quoting from Ayn Rand (in Letters of Ayn Rand):

"But the fact is that Roark did not actually rape Dominique; she had asked for it, and he knew that she wanted it. A man who would force himself on a woman against her wishes would be committing a dreadful crime. What Dominique liked about Roark was the fact that he took the responsibility for their romance and for his own actions. Most men nowadays, like Peter Keating, expect to seduce a woman, or rather they let her seduce them and thus shift the responsibility to her. That is what a truly feminine woman would despise. The lesson in the Roark-Dominique romance is one of spiritual strength and self-confidence, not of physical violence."

And here's the REAL point. Even IF it was rape(which it wasn't), it's still a non sequitur and has nothing to do with the ACTUAL RESULTS of someone following her philosophy, or in your words, "what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously".

Those results can be found in the lives of actual Objectivists, which you did not care to examine.

So, if we are to understand your position correctly, it was OK for Roark to brutally force himself on her, including leaving bruises on her body, because that's what she really wanted him to do.

So, following your logic, if a person really wants you to hit them over the head with a hammer, then it is OK if you do it. You will face no legal repercussions, even if you inflict bodily harm on them as a result.

Or if someone really wants you to humiliate them, cheat them, or lie to them, then there is nothing morally or ethically wrong with doing any of these things. After all, it is what they wanted you to do.

This is simply more evidence of what is wrong with Rand and her followers.

First of all, I think you are evaluating a work of fiction by a very strange standard. If an author includes rape, murder, lies, and so on in a story does this mean that the author believes that those things are good? Do you think that Shakespeare approved of murder too? Or does it mean that the author thinks that these things in a story can help to illuminate some issue or demonstrate the thinking of the characters in the story and make it interesting? A story in which everyone is perfectly nice and never does anything out of the ordinary would be rather boring wouldn't it?

As for your questions about whether an act is voluntary or not changes the nature of various crimes such as rape, yes, consent is a critical issue when it comes to whether an act is rape or not. So the question at hand is whether Dominique consented or not. If you read the book (and it is apparent to me that you have not) then you would know all of the clear signs that she desperately wanted that sexual encounter. She was practically frantic about it. If she didn't want desperately to have sex with him then how do you explain the fact that she intentionally damaged the fireplace? That she horsewhipped Roark after her first attempt to get it fixed failed? That she saw him in the quarry and was strongly attracted to him? Can you explain any of these things at all?

Then there are the larger themes that make it clear that this particular encounter served to move the story along according to certain psychological/philosophical themes that Rand was unfolding. Can you even name these? I can because I read the book. I don't think that you can because I don't think you read it in the first place, or perhaps you were just skimming it and not understanding anything about it while looking for something superficially naughty. Take for example, the reaction of Dominique and Roark to the virtues they perceived in one another given the point of view each one had about the good. Do you know what their differing points of view were and why they might result in such an event? Or what about when the two met long afterward at a party. What were the reactions of the two? Did they make any sense at all if it had been rape?

Of course if there is any uncertainty, we can also get the answer from the horse's mouth. Ayn Rand was questioned about this and she said that "If it was rape then it was rape by engraved invitation.", which is to say, not rape at all. Who could better know the intended meaning of the book than the author? Or should we just take your word despite your apparently never having read the book in question yourself?

As with the other issues, feel free to disagree with Rand all you like, but at least don't tell lies about what she wrote. She was not in favor of rape. Obviously. How could you miss that? Is that another example of "Good Thinking" as you see it?

Refer to the blog update. Several paragraphs have been added at the end to address these concerns. I have included several Rand quotes to further substantiate my claims.

In particular, read the quote from The Fountainhead. It makes clear that this was just not about a man being "masterful" and "taking responsibility". It was about dominating someone weaker and inflicting pain and humiliation, as Rand herself describes. How is such behavior justified by "rational egoism"? The fact that Rand railed against the very idea of the state subjugating and disempowering the individual yet celebrate such behavior in the bedroom is indeed a contradiction of her purportedly rational ideals.

Writing at PBS, respected research psychologist Denise Cummins expresses her fascination with the growing popularity of Rand's ideas among young people. (Incidentally, I've probably met Dr. Cummins before, since I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, where her husband Robert used to be the chair of the department.)

Cummins directly implies that if young people continue to take Rand's ideas seriously, the survival of the species might be threatened. If that were true, it would surely be cause for young people to second guess their interest in Rand. But Cummins clearly misrepresents Rand's ideas, and in a way that suggests her familiarity with Rand derives primarily from what she's found on the Internet, not from reading any or many of Rand's actual texts.
In the following passage, Cummins describes what she takes to be Rand's social philosophy:

“”The fly in the ointment of Rand’s philosophical “objectivism” is the plain fact that humans have a tendency to cooperate and to look out for each other, as noted by many anthropologists who study hunter-gatherers. These “prosocial tendencies” were problematic for Rand, because such behavior obviously mitigates against “natural” self-interest and therefore should not exist. She resolved this contradiction by claiming that humans are born as tabula rasa, a blank slate, (as many of her time believed) and prosocial tendencies, particularly altruism, are “diseases” imposed on us by society, insidious lies that cause us to betray biological reality.””

Cummins goes on to suggest (sometimes plausibly, sometimes not) that failure to cooperate is detrimental to human life. But in assuming that Rand is somehow anti-cooperation, Cummins ignores many of Rand's key ideas and texts, and proceeds to criticize a mere caricature of Objectivism.

I could point to some of these texts, but there's now a handy resource available on just this question, chapter 7 of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Ayn Rand, Darryl Wright's "'A Human Society': Rand's Social Philosophy." Here is a relevant selection from the chapter, which characterizes the nature of the cooperation by the heroes of Atlas Shrugged:

“”The heroes’ lives are focused on achievement—they are thinkers, producers, creators. They dedicate themselves to “remaking the earth in the image of [their] values” (Atlas 1020). Their fundamental means of dealing with one another is through trade: “payment, not expropriation.” And though they are independent, they value each other profoundly. The trade they seek with one another is neither exclusively nor most importantly material, but spiritual: the experience of living together “in a rational world,” “bring[ing] our real work out of hiding,” and “trad[ing] . . . achievements.” [...] They are egoists. [...]. But they are also profoundly social; they are anything but the predatory lone wolves of standard conceptions of egoism.

Rand denies that man is a “social being” in the sense frequently given to this term: she denies that man’s ideas and values are formed fundamentally by society rather than by his own individual choices, and she denies that human achievements are irreducibly collective. But she considers certain kinds of social relationships and societies—ones not based on the foregoing premises but on a correct conception of man’s nature, including a recognition of human volition—to be a deep human need:

“A social environment is most conducive to [man’s] successful survival—but only on certain conditions” (“The Nature of Government” VOS 125/CUI 378). Similarly: “Man gains enormous values from dealing with other men; living in a human society is his proper way of life—but only on certain conditions” (“A Nation’s Unity” ARL 2(2) 127). The “certain conditions” will be explored below. But the needs invoked in these passages are what the philosopher Hugh Akston has in mind when, immediately after the above paragraph from Galt, he comments that “man is a social being, but not in the way the looters preach” (Atlas 747). Man needs society, and benefits from it, “if it is a human society” (“The Objectivist Ethics” VOS 35).””

The rest of the chapter is dedicated to substantiating and fleshing out these claims. I recommend it to Dr. Cummins if she is interested in acquiring an accurate understanding of Rand's philosophy—one that would put her in a position to understand and evaluate the appeal Rand holds to her students. I'm worried that she has not actually read Atlas Shrugged,even though she bases her account of Rand's ideas on a summary of the novel's events. No one who has read the book would describe John Galt as a "ruthless captain of industry." Leave aside "ruthless captain": he is not even a lieutenant of industry. I'll try not to spoil the plot, but readers should know he is about as far from that as possible.

Cummins also characterizes Rand's economic theory in a way that makes it indistinguishable from generic classical economics:

“”It promises a better world if people are simply allowed to pursue their own self-interest without regard to the impact of their actions on others. After all, others are simply pursuing their own self-interest as well.

Modern economic theory is based on exactly these principles. A rational agent is defined as an individual who is self-interested. A market is a collection of such rational agents, each of whom is also self-interested.””

It's a common calumny against Rand to regard her as maintaining some form of psychological egoism, i.e. the idea that all human beings instinctively pursue their self-interest (or their best estimate of it). But again, no one who has read Atlas Shrugged carefully could walk away with this interpretation. Rand clearly presents many of her characters as motivated not by love of life but at best by fear of death, or at worst by hatred of life itself. Rand thought too many people actively wanted self-destruction. Her egoism is a form of ethical egoism, not ofpsychological egoism: as an advocate of robust free will, she maintained that the pursuit of the values that constitute one's self-interest is a choice.

For more on the difference between these very different egoisms, I again recommend theBlackwell Companion: Gregory Salmieri handily explains the incompatibility of the two views in Rand's eyes in chapter 6, "Egoism and Altruism" (pp. 131-133), and Onkar Ghate devotes an entire chapter to explaining the meaning and implications of Rand's view of free will in chapter 5, "A Being of Self-Made Soul."

Cummins goes on to point to what she regards as the detrimental consequences of taking Rand's ideas seriously. Since it's not clear that she is summarizing Rand's actual ideas from the beginning, I think the remainder of the column has to be taken with a grain of salt. But I'll just make two quick observations.

The story of Sears CEO Eddie Lampert, who divided up his company to have units compete with each other, does describe a curious management strategy. Lampert may have liked Rand, but Cummins nowhere offers evidence that this strategy was one Rand would have recommended, unless we attribute to Rand the oversimplified formula of "capitalism = competition." But that's a formula Rand denied, and in any case her view of capitalism is one concerning the freedom of businesses from government interference, not one concerning the freedom of private employees from the oversight of management.

Also, Cummins' discussion of the establishment of so-called "free-trade zones" in Honduras in 2013 is disingenuous at best. The fact that these zones were alleged to be inspired by "libertarian" ideas is not shown to be relevant to the deleterious social conditions that Cummins references via a 2015 Salon article. That article does not discuss anything about these free trade zones, but describes conditions which Cummins can hardly deny must have been present prior to 2013. I would expect better treatment of the difference between causation and correlation from a social scientist.

It's interesting that Cummins would entitle her article "This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously." I'll close by quoting a passage from the Introduction to the Companion(available online), in which Salmieri describes his view of what it means to take Rand seriously. I quoted the same passage just a few weeks ago in a post I called "Taking a Philosopher Seriously":

“”To take an author seriously means to read her, not with an eye toward confirming one’s prejudices (whether favorable or unfavorable), but simply with an eye to understanding what she thinks and why. If one finds her approach unfamiliar and difficult, it means working to overcome that. If one finds what she says implausible or unmotivated, it means taking the time to consider why it seems otherwise to her and to the readers who find her convincing—and it means giving thought to the question of whether it is you or she who is mistaken.””

As Salmieri goes on to point out, academics have by and large failed to take this approach to Rand, and her enduring influence reveals the need for them to correct this oversight. Sadly, Cummins' article is not a step in the right direction.

I have no memory of you at UIUC, nor does my husband. For the record, I too was in the Philosophy Department at the same time my husband was, and it seems odd that you were unaware of that. My appointment was split between Philosophy and Psychology. I don't see that you were enrolled in any of my courses on reasoning and decision-making, nor any of my husband's philosophy courses.

As is apparent from your comment and those of other Rand fans in this thread, Rand aficionados seem to resort to the same complaints when Rand's "objectivism" is summarized and analyzed, namely, that she is misunderstood or misquoted. I assure you neither is the case here. The summary of objectivism is accurate, and the quotes I posted were not taken out of context. (Click on the links to go to the original sources.)

Rand did indeed believe altruism was a biological impossibility, and that is because she knew precious little about evolutionary biology or ethology. Her loathing of altruism, and by extension, cooperation, stemmed in part from her hatred of Soviet communism and the hardships that particular brand of collectivism had imposed on her, her family, and her country.

If you were a Philosophy major, then you must be aware that "objectivism" is not taken seriously as a philosophical theory primarily because it is grounded in many misconceptions of biology, psychology, and human nature.

I gave two examples in the article of what happens when Rand's philosophy is implemented into policy. There are many, many more, with equally dismal outcomes.

Meanwhile, had you taken any of my courses, you would have learned a good deal about evolutionary biology, about human evolutionary history, about game theory and economic theory, and about human nature. You would have learned that fairness and "other regarding behavior" has been incorporated into modern economic theory. You would have learned about the necessity of taking into consideration not only one's own desired outcomes but those of others, and the dangers that ensue when that latter are ignored.

But there is still time. I recommend you pick up a copy of Good Thinking (2012, Cambridge) for a summary of what you missed.

I mentioned that we may have met at the U of I to establish some level of academic cordiality. I didn't specify your affiliation at the U of I because I couldn't remember whether it was a joint appointment and I didn't have reason to think that detail relevant to be relevant to the exchange. In any case, it's likely that all of our memories have faded because this was such a long time ago. I finished my Ph.D. in 2007, which was only right after both you and Robert arrived.

The purpose of my post was to call attention to a misrepresentation of Rand's philosophy broadly construed, not to a particular quotation. I did not say that your quotations were out of context because they are not.

You say "Rand did indeed believe altruism was a biological impossibility," but, unfortunately, you don't actually provide evidence for that claim, either here or in your original article. The quote about collectivism doesn't speak to the possibility or impossibility of altruism, but to the undesirability of collectivism. The journal entry quotation doesn't address any question about altruism, but raises the question of whether a social instinct must influence human action. If anything Rand is implying that it doesn't, in the sense that one can be "born social" (i.e., be biologically pro-social) but make choices to resist this inborn instinct. That's pretty far from saying altruism is impossible. And in any case, the quotation doesn't actually answer the question it raises.

I gave you reliable sources distinguishing Rand's ethical egoism from the theory of psychological egoism from a book published by a prominent academic press in my post. You have not disputed these sources. Rand certainly maintained ethical egoism, but rejected psychological egoism. I can give you more evidence. Here, for instance, is a statement against psychological egoism that appeared in her book *The Virtue of Selfishness*:

"The basic fallacy in the 'everyone is selfish' argument consists of an extraordinarily crude equivocation. It is a psychological truism a tautology that all purposeful behavior is motivated. But to equate 'motivated behavior' with 'selfish behavior' is to blank out the distinction between an elementary fact of human psychology and the phenomenon of ethical choice. It is to evade the central problem of ethics, namely: by what is man to be motivated?" ("Isn't Everyone Selfish?," 1964, pg. 58 )

Incidentally, this criticism of psychological egoism is an extraordinarily common criticism among philosophers. You can see it described in a standard text on the topic, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on egoism, here:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/#1

Obviously, if Rand maintains that not everyone is selfish, this implies that some people are selfless. Rand thought altruism was all too possible, but that it was a choice she recommended against. Rand loathed altruism not because she thought it was impossible, but because she thought it was evil. Whether she is right to think that is a separate matter that we were not discussing.

You suggest that Rand's philosophy is not taken seriously by philosophers, which I am well aware of. I write for the blog of the Ayn Rand Society, which is a professional society affiliated with the American Philosophical Association. The membership of the ARS is professional philosophers. We are aware that the majority of our colleagues do not take Rand seriously. It's our purpose to change this, by raising awareness about the actual content of her ideas, which one must have actual knowledge of her texts to appreciate.

This will be my last comment in response to you, because I'm a bit disconcerted by the overall tenor of your response. In several places you imply that if I had only taken your classes, I would understand why Rand's philosophy is wrong. To begin with, this was never a conversation about whether Rand is right, but one about the actual content of her ideas, right or wrong. But second, I must say that I find your insinuations here condescending. In what code of professional etiquette does one professor speak to another professor as to a student and suggest if only he had taken her classes, he would realize the error of his ways? I attempted to establish academic cordiality and made a sincere attempt to demonstrate that you were misinterpreting a philosophic text. I did not make any personal attacks. I'm sorry that others in my comment thread may have done so, but I have very little control over what gets posted here.

I have to concur with Dr. Bayer re Dr. Cummins' condescending and snooty tone. He posted his response to Cummins' article in a well-argued and respectful manner. He did not receive the same treatment in return.

It makes me quite averse to bothering to put forth the effort to correct Cummins' misrepresentations and distortions, if they're going to be met with such an obstinate and arrogant attitude.

To give Cummins a taste of her own medicine, although this is actually a lot more pointed and accurate: she should read or at least know quite well the themes of Dr. Peikoff's 'Understanding Objectivism' if she really wants to be taken seriously on the subject of what Rand and Objectivism are all about. I've yet to encounter a single person who is clearly hostile (not merely respectfully critical) toward Rand and Objectivism who, demonstrated enough intellectual curiosity to find out what Dr. Peikoff has to say in a book so intriguingly titled. (If anyone questions Dr. Peikoff's role as a teacher/interpreter of Objectivism, take Rand's own word for it: https://books.google.com/books?id=TYZaNwrIM8YC&pg=PT659 .)

As for Objectivism being psychologically realistic, it seems to make no lasting impression on Cummins and many other of Rand's critics that Branden's specialization was psychology; he was certainly conversant with the field in the '60s when he was writing for the publications he co-edited with Rand; he would certainly have things to say that she could, for the sake of objectivity, consult to be sure she was getting her story right, Rapoport Rules-style (http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapoport-rules-criticism ).

To get specific, a couple egregious things Cummins did:

(1) The statement, "Her loathing of altruism, and by extension, cooperation, . . . " is certainly a non-sequitur on its face given Rand's characterization (you can call it fair or not, which is another issue) of altruism, i.e., as being self-sacrificial. I've found that it's a *standard* practice of those hostile to Rand not to clearly specify what she meant by "altruism," and then go on to say she "opposed altruism" in its more widely-understood, benign sense. You can fault Rand's characterization of altruism (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html) as much as you like, but you can't expect to get away with misreporting what her characterization is and expect to be taken seriously. (Likewise, when Rand says she upholds egoism or selfishness (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/selfishness.html) it doesn't accord with Rapoport Rules or fairness to then say she advocated selfishness in the usual, negative sense. Those hostile to Rand are quite reliably consistent in that vicious practice as well.)

(2) Egregious is the nature of the selection of examples of Rand's ideas "being put into practice." Someone has already brought up examples such as Jimmy Wales's wikipedia. which is more a reflection of the themes in Peikoff's 'Understanding Objectivism' than those hostile to Rand could ever have expected given their studied ignorance of such things. The themes of how knowledge is hierarchically integrated or interconnected - the *actual* core of Objectivism as serious students of the philosophy are well aware - is nicely on display in the wikipedia format with its hyperlinking and such. (There's no way that this phenomenon would have escaped Wales, a longtime student of Rand's ideas who moderated an e-mail list on Objectivism for years back in the '90s.) So there is an actual example of someone who knows Rand's ideas well who created a valuable free product in the promotion of learning. Curiously, the hostile anti-Rand crowd seems not very interested, all of a sudden, in following up on such counter-examples.

It's one thing to be critical of Rand, to use well-supported arguments to point out one's disagreements with her. It's been done before. But I've not found such a commitment to fair and balanced discourse among the openly hostile ones.

On a parting note, I'll say this: Cummins' mention of this book, 'Good Thinking,' published by a prominent academic press (Cambridge) has piqued my curiosity, and I'm going to pursue that lead since my leading research interest is what I term "intellectual perfection" (in the Aristotelian tradition). Would that the mention of Peikoff's 'The Art of Thinking' course or Tara Smith's 'Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist' (2006, Cambridge) did the same in Cummins' case?

I am going to let your comment remain despite the name calling and other temper tantrums. I was hardly arrogant or condescending, but I can see that, like many Rand aficionados, there is no room for humor when discussing her writings.

With respect to your other objections, please read the update that I just posted. I think the sections I added suffice as responses to your concerns.

Please see my update to the blog post. I believe the sections I added suffice as responses to your concerns.

Regarding arrogance, I see none nor intended any, but I suspect the ruffled feathers are a response to my attempts to defuse with humor. Unfortunately, that seems to be difficult to do with Rand aficionados. You are, all told, a very passionate lot.

I am not going to go on a huge rant, but please read more about her philosophy. Objectivism is basically existentialism.

The name "Objectivism" derives from the idea that human knowledge and values are objective: they exist and are determined by the nature of reality, to be discovered by one's mind, and are not created by the thoughts one has. Rand stated that she chose the name because her preferred term for a philosophy based on the primacy of existence—"existentialism"—had already been taken. via Wikipedia

Regarding selflessness, there is no such thing as a selfless act, because you decide what to do...well unless you are under a trance or something. If you decided to take a bullet for someone else that is your choice. You decided to take that bullet yourself. It's really just semantics. This makes her very misunderstood.

She was radically against communism. This is probably from growing up in Russia and seeing her parents pharmacy taken away from her by the government....no private ownership.

Some good reads:
http://www.cracked.com/article_20543_the-5-most-insanely-misunderstood-morals-famous-stories_p2.html

You misunderstand what is mean by selflessness. It doesn't mean that you yourself are not making a choice or that you are in a trance. It means that you are acting to benefit another without regard to your own costs and without expectation of reciprocation of benefits in the future.

Rand isn't misunderstood with respect her position on altruism. She knew precious little of evolutionary biology or ethology, and as a result she firmly believed that altruism was a biological impossibility.

OK, so you assert that Ayn Rand "firmly believed that altruism was a biological impossibility". Where exactly did you get this idea? Do you have any quotations or even a logical argument that would justify this conclusion? Throughout her writings she argued that people should refuse to engage in altruistic acts which of course directly implies that such choices are possible. Whether this is true or false is beside the point, it was clearly her point of view.

Here are a few passages that should make that clear:

"Since nature does not provide man with an automatic form of survival, since he has to support his life by his own effort, the doctrine that concern with one’s own interests is evil means that man’s desire to live is evil—that man’s life, as such, is evil. No doctrine could be more evil than that.

Yet that is the meaning of altruism."
The Virtue of Selfishness, Introduction, ix

"Even though altruism declares that “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” it does not work that way in practice. The givers are never blessed; the more they give, the more is demanded of them; complaints, reproaches and insults are the only response they get for practicing altruism’s virtues (or for their actual virtues). Altruism cannot permit a recognition of virtue; it cannot permit self-esteem or moral innocence. Guilt is altruism’s stock in trade, and the inducing of guilt is its only means of self-perpetuation. If the giver is not kept under a torrent of degrading, demeaning accusations, he might take a look around and put an end to the self-sacrificing. Altruists are concerned only with those who suffer—not with those who provide relief from suffering, not even enough to care whether they are able to survive. When no actual suffering can be found, the altruists are compelled to invent or manufacture it."
“Moral Inflation”, The Ayn Rand Letter, III, 13, 2

"The injunction 'don’t judge' is the ultimate climax of the altruist morality which, today, can be seen in its naked essence. When men plead for forgiveness, for the nameless, cosmic forgiveness of an unconfessed evil, when they react with instantaneous compassion to any guilt, to the perpetrators of any atrocity, while turning away indifferently from the bleeding bodies of the victims and the innocent—one may see the actual purpose, motive and psychological appeal of the altruist code. When these same compassionate men turn with snarling hatred upon anyone who pronounces moral judgments, when they scream that the only evil is the determination to fight against evil—one may see the kind of moral blank check that the altruist morality hands out."
For the New Intellectual, 45

How can any of these (and there are many more I could point to) be consistent with the view that altruism is impossible? You are perfectly entitled to say that you disagree with her point of view, but your completely unsourced and unsupported claim that she believed that altruism is impossible when she "firmly" believed that it was possible and that it was a bad idea does't demonstrate an understanding of what she actually thought and wrote, nor do many of your other claims about what she said. How exactly can we have an intelligent conversation about this when you make things like this up? Is that what you consider "Good Thinking" to consist of?

As for your comment that she didn't know much about evolutionary biology, that's probably true, but her ideas about these things didn't arise from any particular theory of evolutionary biology in the first place, so I don't see how that can allow you to draw any conclusions about her views on altruism or anything else, other than that her views were not those of evolutionary biologists.

As for your comment that I don't understand what is meant by "selflessness", I have to ask "Meant by whom?" I know very clearly what Ayn Rand meant by the term. I think that your definition may be rather different than hers. You could perhaps assert otherwise (based on what exactly?) or you could take the time to find out. Which of these does "Good Thinking" consists of?

You misunderstand what is mean by selflessness. It doesn't mean that you yourself are not making a choice or that you are in a trance. It means that you are acting to benefit another without regard to your own costs and without expectation of reciprocation of benefits in the future.
Rand isn't misunderstood with respect her position on altruism. She knew precious little of evolutionary biology or ethology, and as a result she firmly believed that altruism was a biological impossibility.

1. Rand never said it wasn't a choice.

2. "Acting to benefit another without regard to your own costs." They profit, you lose = sacrifice. Which is exactly what Rand said it was.

3. Rand never said altruism was biologically impossible. She said it was incompatible with Capitalism, and unsustainable for a civilized society.

----

"What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: “No.” Altruism says: “Yes.”" -Ayn Rand http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html

In 'Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking' (2013), Daniel Dennett adopts and formulates "a list of rules formulated decades ago by the legendary social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport." (I take it that in a profession such as Dr. Cummins's, Rapoport would be well-known?)

Here's how Dennett puts it:

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.

2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

Have the letter or spirit of Rapoport Rules been observed in Cummins' "demolition" of Randian ethics? What might lead us to think that she didn't adhere all that well to these ideals? One telltale sign that something is amiss is when defender after defender after defender of Rand says that Rand's ideas are being unfairly misconstrued. That *should* tell the critic that perhaps a different strategy should be tried - with the conscious, diligent and enthusiastic *aim* of getting Rand's defenders to agree with her characterizations in the ways described in the above Rules. Why should one aim any lower than that?

All we *know* for sure from the record presented so far is that Rand was adamantly opposed to this thing she called altruism, which she characterized in terms of its endorsing an abject selflessness, self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, and so on. What we *know for sure* is that she rejected collectivistic and tribal "premises" and supported a social ideal of free individuals pursuing their personal happiness.

What *hasn't* been shown - hasn't fulfilled the requirements of Rule 1 (much less the other Rules) - is that Rand rejected cooperation, generosity, kindness, or other such pro-social attitudes that she *explicitly says not to confuse with altruism* (indicating that there are confusions about such things, further indicating that *her views* about altruism could be confused with a rejection of such pro-social attitudes if her readers aren't duly careful).

We are *told* that Rand held altruism to be biologically impossible. Do we *know for sure* this to be the case, as per Rule One? (Best as I can tell, a careful and conscientious reader can determine for sure that this claim is *false*.) After all, Rand says altruism is *evil*. How could one even so much as *make sense* of her saying that if she also thought it was biologically impossible? It appears here that we have a flat *contradiction* between what we *do know for sure* Rand said, and a claim made about what she thought. Just on its face, this raises questions as to the quality of the research that underlies such a claim.

None of this should be thought of as unreasonable, or unduly biased in Rand's favor, or something else that would reflect poorly on someone defending Rand or questioning such representations of Rand.

A heuristic test for whether one is following the Rules for a thinker who is dead and not around to defend herself: Imagine you *were* discussing that thinker's ideas directly and in person; would one's re-expressing of her ideas meet with *her* approval as being accurate representations? Unless one attends to questions such as this in one's own mind, how does one *know* one is doing a good job at criticism? Psychological research of all things should alert us to the possibilities of cognitive bias and to the need for developing techniques (such as the Rapoport Rules) to combat them.

Chris, this is not a philosophical debate. The article is about what happens when Rand's "objectivism" is put into practice. The proof is in the outcomes of such attempts. To ignore such facts is to provide proof that "objectivism" is more a religion than a testable theory.

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About the Author

Denise Dellarosa Cummins, Ph.D., is the author of Good Thinking, The Historical Foundations of Cognitive Science, and Evolution of Mind.